Sounds like a Neighborhood Watch fanboy.
He seems pretty clearly to be a law enforcement fanboy in general.
Well, neighborhood watch programs are not required to belong to the regional and national associations. Our POA watch doesn't, but there have been discussions about doing so.
There's definitely conflicting information out there about whether Zimmerman was self-appointed or was actually recognized by the homeowners association as their watch captain. The March 17th Miami Herald article calls him both "self-appointed watch captain" and "volunteer".
In September, the association started looking into setting up a neighborhood watch program, scheduled a neighborhood watch presentation by the Sanford Police Department, and during that meeting called for volunteers. Zimmerman was the only volunteer.
According to that same Miami Herald article, Wendy Dorival, the Sanford Police volunteer program coordinator, conducted that September presentation to the association:
In articles--such as this one from The Chicago Defender--suggesting the homeowners association could be sued in this case, assertions are made that the February homeowners association newsletter named Zimmerman as "our Captain".
So, was Zimmerman self-appointed or was he recognized by the HOA? I don't know which is true; but I do know the possibility of shared liability and a helluva lot of money hinges on the answer.
"Self-appointed" and "volunteer" are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd say just about all people who self-appoint themselves into a task are volunteering to do that task, so the use of those two words to describe Zimmerman does not suggest two different statuses.
Okay, so let's say the HOA wanted to set up a neighborhood watch. Then, indeed, they are partially liable for what Zimmerman did, because if indeed he was volunteering to do this job as a service of the community, then they, the providers of the service would be responsible for making sure it was done right. According to the quoted article, they would have received the information of exactly what a neighborhood watch is supposed to do and what it is not permitted to do. Zimmerman got that information, too.
If this report is accurate, then it means that Zimmerman cannot claim he did not know he was not supposed to carry a gun. So while he might have been okay carrying it with him when he went to run his errand, according to his story,
he had absolutely no justification for taking it with him when he left the car to follow Martin, which he was also not justified in doing. So there goes that part of his defense. Better for him to claim ignorance of the rules than to be exposed as having received the training as well as the immediate instruction and disregarded both.
Further, if the HOA were indeed aware of Zimmerman's actions, then why would they not be aware of the nuisance calls he had made to 911 in the past? If they, as the directors of the community were officially setting up a watch, then it was their responsibility to make sure it was done right and in accordance with the law. If this report is accurate, then they should be liable for damages, in my opinion, absolutely.
But still, none of it means that Zimmerman had been granted authority over that neighborhood. NW's are organized community groups that use a coordinated method for communicating with the police. They are not authorities, and there are good reasons for that which touch on both social order and the personal safety of NW volunteers.
As the police volunteer said in the quoted article, there are laws against vigilantism, laws against impersonating police or other public officials, laws against assuming the power and authority of the police even if one does not literally impersonate a cop. No one is required to cooperate with a neighborhood watch. If a neighborhood watch demands that someone on a public street stop and account for themselves, that someone can tell the NW to go fuck themselves, and legally there is not a damned thing the NW can do about it, except call the police. The NW volunteer who takes it upon themselves to forcibly stop that random stranger is breaking the law because they are not the police. Simply volunteering to be the neighborhood watch, with or without any official nod, does not give anyone any extra authority under the law.
That is why there are official organizations for neighborhood watches. Their primary purpose is to give out the instructions and information that prevent NW volunteers from getting killed and prevent them from becoming law-breakers themselves.
Zimmerman's actions on that night and his record of other 911 calls suggest that he thought claiming the title of Neighborhood Watch Captain, with or without training or coordinating with the local police on how to set up a real watch, somehow deputized him in someway and gave him some measure of authority in relation to the police. He seemed to think it made him an Auxiliary Police Officer (even though typically Auxiliaries are not permitted to carry weapons), or better yet, an armed security guard/bodyguard of some kind (even though they, too, have nowhere near the authority of the police to stop strangers on the street). It would be a nice little fantasy he invented for himself, but of course it would also be utter nonsense.
Remember, I was responding to the observation that Zimmerman should never have been given any kind of authority. I was pointing, because of the above points, that he had in fact not been given any authority by anyone. He simply claimed an utterly fictitious kind of authority for himself. It's fictitious both because, whether or not he had ever set up a real watch in his neighborhood*, real neighborhood watches don't give anyone the authority he seemed to think he had.
I think it's an irrelevant point whether Zimmerman was appointed by committee, self-appointed, or appointed by God himself after finding his flashlight in a burning bush.
The undisputed facts are that he broke NW ROE regarding the pursuit of a "suspicious person" (namely "don't do it"). Not only that, he was flat-out told to stand down by a police dispatcher and didn't. And you can probably get Nighttimer to rattle off the list of lies Zimmerman has been caught red-handed on with little to ZERO room for creative interpretation.
Bottom line, those are really the most important things in this case. The rest is just smoke, mirrors or bullshit.
Agreed, absolutely.
(* And I have to say, frankly, I'm not sure the watch ever was set up properly, but that just might be because of a personal prejudice of my own. I've seen how organizations like HOA's operate, and they can often be, sadly, the most half-assed, we-really-have-no-idea-what-we're-doing, well-intentioned but utterly clueless operations imaginable. I would not be at all surprised to learn that the process of setting up a watch had been brought up in a meeting but never followed through on by anyone except Zimmerman, because everyone on the board thought someone else had dealt with it or that it was okay for Zimmerman to do it all himself since he was so dedicated and committed and other positive and affirming team-speak words often bandied about by untrained community/group directors.)